Because it meets our logic to integrate students and training courses linked to responsible tourism to our Hopineo collective, we have obviously accepted to assist the University on this matter. Indeed, our vocation is to promote the different techniques and solutions offered by sustainable tourism. Be in touch with motivated and interested students, while enabling them to get involved with our organisation and the running of its tasks sounds particularly relevant. Also, having their feedback and their fresh opinions on our work is priceless!

After a few months, followed up by Hopineo members, two student groups successfully finished their task, for both Hopineo and the University. Hopineo also ended up receiving two complete studies with recommendations.

A requirements report very ambitious!

We had two groups of students taking on the challenges we had to throw at them!

The first group, composed of Aurélie, Manon, Myo and Baptiste, Year 3 students in the Professional Degree, worked on the HopSolutions, with the objective to strengthen the expertise on site from Hopineo and optimise its broadcasting.

The second, composed of Narimane, Mahria, Julia and Tiago, worked on the setting up of Hopineo’s economic model, through the optimisation of donations and the creation of an online shop

On Hopineo’s side, Julien had been entitled to coordinate the students for the HopSolutions study, while Antoine was in charge of the online-shop workshop. Jean-Luc was helping on both sides.

After a first meeting to set the bases of the work to be done, the students started working hard on the analysis and diagnostic phases to be able to present us a reverse planning and a plan of action to successfully complete their work.

Those few weeks of consideration quickly showed some relevant results, since they enabled the students to revise the ambitions of the requirement report, which were considered too high to start with.

Antoine, who closely followed up this phase, explains this change of objectives:

[vc_testimonial author=”Antoine” company=””] Today, Hopineo is at a crucial phase of its development and needs an economic model reliable to ensure its durability; this is why we had set an ambitious requirement report, hoping it would enable us to launch the e-shop by the end of the students’ work. But thanks to their preparation and analysis, the students managed to convince us to revise our objectives, to ensure the global feasibility of the

project [/vc_testimonial]

Reactivity and capacity of adjustment, key ideas to a successful work!

It’s in a self-questioning moment – which are good to have once in a while – that the students discovered Hopineo. And more than the efforts required by the work, it is their capacity of reactivity and adjustment that turned out to be most important to complete their task.

After all their work of preparation and their advices about the optimisation of donations collected, we asked the students to start the prospecting to establish the catalogue of the e-shop. And this is what their task was supposed to finish with, since we had postponed the launching of the shop. However, once again, the reality of Hopineo’s running caught us up!

We had just celebrated or first Hopineo Weekend (which you can follow or re-follow thanks to Mahery’s article), and this was the occasion of long and deep conversations which, one thing leading to another, lead us to suspend the e-shop project for now, in order to focus on the transformations of the organisation and the new directions we had discussed about.

To that effect, Antoine invited the students to complete their task with the realisation of the maquette of the e-shop, finishing their preparatory work with a tangible preconisation answering the analysis made previously.

Based on the feedback from their workshop and reactivity, Narimane, Mehria, Julia and Tiago got straight back to work to reach this new objective in the time allowed. The day before their oral exam facing a jury composed of teachers and of Antoine for Hopineo, they had successfully completed their task, and had handed a complete file, presenting the full report of their work and their results.

Despite a turbulent context, several modifications and difficulties met along the way, Narimane, Mahria, Julia and Tiago demonstrated their capacity of adjustment, and impressed us with their work and their involvement.

Some propositions about the optimisation of donations have already been applied and their ideas on the e-shop are added to ours until we can apply them online.

HopSolutions: our catalogue of practical resources is updated!

As for the other group, Aurélie, Manon, Myo and Baptiste impressed the team by their professionalism and the quality of their finale presentation, which Mahéry and Justine could attend after their Marseille adventure.

Strong from this experience, and thanks to the involvement of Laurent Arcuset (director of Tourism Diplomas at the University), Hopineo and the University of Avignon and the Lands of Vaucluse have renewed their partnership for 3 years.

Article prepared by Antoine, online thanks to Mahery and translated from French to English by Valérie.